Christmas at the Orphanage

Plenty of good Christmas posts and pics at the LHI blog. No need to repost it all here, just go there and check it out.
http://www.livinghopeintl.org/blog.asp

Foreign TV Stars

The local TV station wanted to do a story on foreigners celebrating the Moon Festival. It is mostly in Chinese but is definitely worth watching. We hosted a party at our house and invited our friends - some foreigners and some Chinese. I think you will enjoy it.



Stay tuned. Last week we filmed the sequel - Foreigners celebrating Christmas in Beijing. We will post the sequel as soon as we can.

Gao's Turkey

Mr. Gao is our driver. We call him up when we need a driver to take us places. We have used him many times and have developed quite a good friendship with him. He has a nice car and is one of the funniest men in China. We called Gao to take us into town (about a 45 minute drive) for Thanksgiving Dinner. We would normally take public transportation (about an hour and a half with favorable traffic), because it is so cheap its almost free, but since we were bringing a warm dish to the smorgasbord we thought it would be better to take a driver. We found our own way home from the party.
When I saw Gao later that week he asked me why I didn’t bring him any Turkey from our Thanksgiving Party. He didn’t get to eat Turkey this Thanksgiving and he thought that was a shame since he had American friends (Turkey’s are native to North America so most Chinese have only heard of such a bird, or such a meat - this also means turkey is very expensive in China - our Thanksgiving turkey was $147). I felt guilty that I was not able to give my driver/friend some Thanksgiving turkey.
Fast forward 3 weeks. Our family was going to attend the Beijing International Christian Fellowship’s Christmas Banquet. This was a swanky affair and the Beijing Marriott and my wife was having contractions to the point that her doctor told her to slow down so that the baby didn’t come out so early. Because of the doctor’s prescribed restriction on Chyloe’s physical exertion we called Gao to take us to the Christmas banquet. When we got to the end of the buffet line we saw a man carving a scrumptious looking Turkey (it tasted even better than it looked). We were not going to miss this opportunity to bless our friend with some holiday turkey. Instead of having to wrap it in a napkin we used one of our gift boxes to deliver the stolen meat.

This was what the gift box looked like before - chocolate coins (gold), a sachet (incense), and some flavored oil (myrrh), and a small booklet explaining the good news of Christmas in English and Chinese.

This was the gift box as we used it. We also gave Gao a real gift box with the other gifts.

Christmas Frivolity

We wanted to host a Christmas party at our house for the kids. This was not possible since we have a small apartment and there are 73 kids so instead we decided to host 4 Christmas parties. The first party was 24 of the youngest kids, ages 6-11. We did a hot potato gift exchange with them, ate some snacks, sang a couple Christmas songs, and they prepared a small performance for us. The second party was all of the older boys, 19 of them. They verified the old youth ministry axiom, "they will eat as much as you buy." With these boys we did a gift exchange with different rules - you could either open a new present or steal a present from someone else (we didn't implement the thievery into the young kids' game for obvious reasons). The attached video shows a bit of the skullduggery that went on at the boys' party. The chocolate was stolen from Matthew after about 3 seconds. The "give me your money" ski hat was stolen from Samuel very quickly as well.

To see their excitement over yo-yo's and chocolate makes us wish that we had enough money to lavish all 73 of them with gifts galore. Or maybe if we did that then they would not get as excited about yo-yo's and chocolate. Either way, these kids deserve it. The beautiful simplicity of seeing their joy and contentment has been refreshing this holiday season. If we can't be with our family this season then there is no place else i would rather be.

Thank You Ridgeview

When Chyloe’s family was spending their last day with us her Dad tried, fighting through tears, to tell us how proud he was of us. It is one of those things that one never doubts but always enjoys hearing. He then proceeded to tell me that Ridgeview wanted to encourage me by buying me a new bike. I think being an encouragement was only about 60% of the true reason they were buying me a new bike, the other 40% was that he was little bit embarrassed by my old bike. I was only mildly offended by his comments on my old bike.
I had been saving my RMB to buy a new bike. I was about halfway to my goal to buy a bike I had seen, liked, and could afford. The budget Don gave me was quite a bit higher than I had been aiming. The search for the new bike was almost as fun as the purchase. I was able to buy the bike 3 models higher than the one for which I had originally been saving. I was also able to buy a “luggage rack”, a speedometer, and a quality lock.
In the States a nice bike may have been more of a recreational purchase, but in China it is my lifeline. I don’t have a car. Traffic is nightmarish even if I did. The bike is the fastest way to get most places - and now it is even faster. I have had the bike for 3 weeks, and according to my bike computer here are the stats: it is 14.77 km (9.1 miles) round trip from my house to the orphanage, I have biked 211.8 km (131 miles) in 3 weeks, and my top speed has been 41.9 km/h (26.03 mph).
When the family came they also brought with them 8 extra suitcases full of baby clothes, pacifiers, oatmeal cream pies - the essentials. I would write more about this stuff but it doesn’t excite me like the bike does (if you want someone to gush over pacifier sterilizing wipes you will have to wait until my wife starts a blog). I have included a picture.
Thank you so much, Ridgeview, not just for the bike, but for the support, the prayers, the baby items, the love. We love you all and couldn’t be doing what we are doing without you.

Let It Be

Last week we had an third trimester ultrasound at the foreign hospital in Beijing where we will have out third son in the next few weeks. Everything is looking great. In the ultrasound room I saw the picture posted below hanging on the wall. I'm not even sure what to write about it. Abortion in China is a VERY different issue than in the States. It is not a political issue. It is not even a moral issue for most. It is simply a medical procedure. I have to assume that the poster is a part of some sort of governmental campaign since they do not have pro-life advocacy groups in China.

You can fill in your own commentary.


If you cannot read the English translation of the Chinese text it simply says, "boy or girl let it be."

Finished!

For those of you who have been wondering (and I know all of you have been dying to find out) how long it takes my family of 4 to eat 4.5 lbs. of Hot Tamales (see blog post on October 12th http://consideritrubbish.blogspot.com/2010/10/team-of-12-people-from-prescott-az-my.html), we just finished. Answer: 57 days.